My current workstation is a build from 2016 with a i7-6950X overclocked substantially (4.5GHz), 64GB DDR4 and a Samsung 960 Pro 2TB.
I wanted to replace it much earlier with Zen 2 Threadripper but I couldn't get the parts. Kept getting delayed until it made no sense anymore.
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The 10 core i7-6950X is competitive for full build compilation with a 24 core Xeon from the same generation and is substantially better for most incremental builds where it's heavily bottlenecked on a couple threads.
It was really good for a couple years but it's awful now.
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When Zen 3 Threadripper comes out, I'll happily pay thousands of dollars to get a 64+ core CPU, nice motherboard and 256GB+ memory to go with it.
Could not wait any longer though, and I'll happily turn this into a replacement for my badly aging gaming PC so it won't be wasted.
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Also, for the time being, I'm going to switch to dual booting on this machine while still also using my older workstation. So, I can either have 2 workstations doing builds or I can be doing gaming on this while also switching over regularly to test new builds on the other, etc.
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I ran a cad design office with two ws x 7 prs, have it all stillb but i bet moore's law did slow down but not to a standstill,.. Awell, benchmarking will get me where i need to go
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Threadripper chips are massive with massive power usage and heat spread across the huge die. They need special coolers and you need a really good one to truly take advantage of them. They bypassed chip density limits with die size. It's a massive server CPU but with high clocks.
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Oil or liquid submersion cooling with funny sounding chemicals would be great for that
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The problem with buying a CPU like amd.com/en/products/cp or amd.com/en/products/cp (the 2 highest end Zen 2 Threadripper chips) is that I wouldn't even trust an AIO cooler to avoid killing them. It has to be reliable air cooling. AIOs are actually worse than air anyways...
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icegiantcooling.com is the only way to make 64 core Threadripper work properly without risking that massive investment in a $4000 or $5500 USD CPU if your water cooling loop leaks, etc.
The main issue is that it's such a ridiculous amount of heat from a single huge CPU die.
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NH-D15 works as well as icegiantcooling.com for a more typical CPU. It's as good or perhaps even a bit better at taking away heat from a smaller, denser CPU.
They only have noctua.at/en/nh-u14s-tr4 for Threadripper though and even an NH-D15 version wouldn't be enough for 64c.
I'm guessing that AMD won't bother with higher core counts for Zen 3 even if only because there was so little interest there was in making proper coolers for the current Threadripper generation. There wasn't a single useful AIO made for it. All worse than Noctua's offering...
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I bet you're right it's a commercial issue, surely its really not a problem to solve the engineering of it, funds permitting sais the aerospace engineer :-)
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